HUMANE RELIGION

Humane Religion Magazinefrom Humane Religion

EDITORIAL
May - June 1996 Issue

Train a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not
depart from it. Proverbs: 22:6.

This verse of scripture is usually recited in order to remind parents
that if children are taught a moral, upright way of life, such training will
guide their activities for the rest of their lives. Unfortunately, the
reverse is also true. Children who are taught to behave immorally will also
be guided by that early training for the rest of their lives.

Too often, Children are taught that killing
animals is an acceptable pastime.

This is painfully obvious in the heritage men bequeath to their sons when
they teach them that killing is an acceptable pastime. These fathers
condition their children to regard hunting as a recreational activity--a
"sport" useful for reducing stress and conducive to male-bonding.

The empathy for animals that children have developed through
identification with the rabbits, squirrels, raccoons and deer that fill the
pages of the books they have been familiar with since infancy, is
systematically worn away as they are taught to kill the creatures they had
learned to love.

And when they show remorse or concern when faced with the murder of
animals they know are capable of feeling pain—of being happy or fearful—they
are ridiculed into submission. They are taught that manliness means an
erosion of compassion and empathy.

For the most part, the fathers who do this to their sons are victims of
the same conditioning. But what of the mothers? At a time when women have
increasing autonomy, few have been able to use this freedom to counteract
the violence and brutality their husbands are inculcating in their sons.
They are told that in opposing their husbands they will "emasculate" their
male children.

These women do not even receive support from the Pastors of their
churches when they make an effort to have their sons, as well as their
daughters, emulate the love and compassion that Jesus lived and taught.

Their ministers are afraid of seeming effeminate to the men in their
congregations, or of alienating them. They will preach against a thousand
sins from their pulpits, but they will not condemn the cruelty and murder
that is called "sport" and "recreation. "

Even though they receive no help from their churches, women and men who
understand that hunting is opposed to the compassionate lifestyle Jesus
enjoined on his followers, must speak out against it. It will not be the
first time that the people in the pews were conscious of errors their
leaders did not yet recognize.

Slavery, sexism, child labor, and countless other ills were recognized as
such by individual church-members at a time when their religious
organizations were still blind to the ungodliness such things represented.

It needs to be stressed that to passively oppose
such evils as cruel sports is never sufficient in itself.. We need to be
active as was the Good Shepherd Himself. Martin Luther King, Jr. once said
“To condone evil is to be as guilty as to perpetrate it.” All that is
necessary is for those who are assumed to be decent and respectable folk, to
remain silent.

The Revd. James Thompson, Episcopal priest.
Excerpted from A Cleric’s Contempt for Cruel Sports..

The problem of correcting church errors is not new. In the time of Jesus,
his disciples complained to him that he "offended" the religious leaders of
his day when he said of the Pharisees: "These people honor [God] with
their lips, but their hearts are far from [God]." In answer to his
disciples complaints about what he had said, Jesus further indicted those
leaders. He told his followers to ignore some of the things these men were
teaching because "they are blind guides and teachers. And if a blind man
leads a blind man, both will fall into a ditch."

It is up to those who understand that hunting is the wanton murder of
God's creatures, to give witness to that truth in their churches. They must
help their leaders, and those who have been misled by them, to climb out of
the ditch into which they have fallen.

Fair Use Notice: This document, and others on our web site, may contain copyrighted
material whose use has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owners.
We believe that this not-for-profit, educational use on the Web constitutes a fair use
of the copyrighted material (as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law).
If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond fair use,
you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.